There is no better outcome that the Democrats could have hoped for than the demographic despair that has overtaken some sections of the conservative movement. While the Republican establishment prepares to accept Obama as the new FDR, the grass roots feels alienated and willing to write off the whole country.

Demographics is a serious issue, but it’s not a done deal either. Countries are not static. America was created because a large number of Europeans moved to a place that had formerly been populated by the descendants of Siberian refugees crossing over the Bering Strait. I have often said that demographics kind is destiny, but it’s a mathematical destiny. Change the numbers and you change the destiny. Taking back America demographically is a matter of having enough children within a cultural structure that passes down the values of adults to the children, while focusing on limiting immigration as much as possible. This isn’t an impossible task. The Amish population doubles every 20 years and they retain the majority of their children within their communities despite the obvious appeals of the outside world. There are 250,000 Amish in the United States and Canada now. By 2040 there will be over a million of them.Utah has the highest fertility rate in the country and 9 out of 10 children are born to married couples. The Mormon Church is slowing down its expansion, and is having some retention and birth rate issues, perhaps due to its liberalization and growing investment in overseas missionary work, but its numbers are still a reminder of what is possible.Demographics can be deceptive, because what we are really talking about are the economic and cultural factors that dissuade large family sizes and that alienate children from the values of their ancestors. What we are really talking about is a clash between progressives and traditionalists.As an Orthodox Jew, I represent a group that is at the front lines of the clash. In the last century and a half, Jewish progressives have done everything possible to destroy Jewish religion, values and even nationhood. For half that time they were enormously successful, wreaking havoc across entire communities, using state power to force parents into their own schools, and building a literary and cultural infrastructure aimed at ridiculing and destroying traditional values.They are still at it today, and their tactics and propaganda are as bad as they ever were, but they also losing. While the progressives embrace the culture of abortion and gay rights, the traditionalists have children. Within a decade, a majority of New York Jews will be traditionalist and the impact of that is already being felt in elections. The progressives have ramped up their usual hate campaigns against Orthodox Jews, which is why you see so many negative stories in the media, but the demographics of their progressive culture doom them to extinction.This same outcome would have taken place nationally in the clash between American traditionalists and progressives, if not for the ace in the hole of immigration. And yet immigration is only half the picture. The bigger half of the picture is culture.Would the Amish be who they are if in between plow breaks they were watching Reality TV and getting lessons on liberal values? Instead the Amish segregated themselves from the culture and have thrived because of it. And that can be done without completely abandoning technology as a whole.Orthodox Jews built a cultural infrastructure to convey their values to our children while cutting them off, as much as possible, from the cultural programming of progressives. The largest expense of Orthodox Jewish parents and the community as a whole is on the infrastructure of private schools that teach traditional values to their children. An Orthodox Jewish community is defined by its schools and its best and brightest go into Chinuch or Education.But schools aren’t enough. Orthodox Jews raise their children on their own books and their own music. Everything that children are exposed to from the youngest ages is supposed to come from within their own culture to such an extent that when Oprah visited a Chassidic family they had no idea who she was, or who Mickey Mouse and Beyonce were. Obviously this isn’t universal and the degree of exposure varies, but retention rates and birth rates are highest among those with the lowest levels of progressive cultural exposure.Modern Orthodox Jews, a group of which I am, obviously, a member, have the highest levels of cultural exposure, the lowest birth rates and the highest susceptibility to progressive views. The Modern Orthodox approach was viable in 1950s America where the outside culture was healthy, but I have come to question its survival value in an era where the culture is decaying and hostile to any form of traditional family values. Chassidic Jews, with the lowest rates of cultural exposure also have the highest birth rates and, unlike Modern Orthodox Jews, I have yet to meet a single liberal Chassid.

So is cultural secession the solution? For traditional Jews it might be, but for traditionalists as a whole, who have the demographic reach to turn the national numbers around, it can be a temporary solution until the numbers and the political power that goes with them are theirs. As with Orthodox Jews, there is a Christian culture industry, but it isn’t enough to have positive messages as an alternative, it’s equally important to cut out as many negative messages as possible.Above all else, education is the future. Traditionalists who fail to understand this will allow the educational system and the entertainment industry to transform their children into progressives. Progressives know that control of the educational system means control of the future. Without the educational system and immigration, progressives are doomed to be cafe radicals. With them, they can count the generations until they control everything.The progressives have few children of their own. Your children are their children. If they can corrupt your children, then they have a future. If they cannot, then they will go off and die in a corner. The progressives have three strengths, class warfare, cultural programming and immigration. America had prosperity that negated class warfare, but it neglected to safeguard its culture from the left and did not consider the consequences of Third World immigration. With their political and culture power, the left destroyed prosperity and now with all three cards in their hand, the progressives are rising high.But too many conservatives have despaired because they have fallen prey to the myth of a perfect America that once was and can never be again. But America was never perfect, like every person, it was a work in progress. It was a struggle between ideas and ideologies and that struggle did not end because the progressives have worked and plotted to get this far. Defeating them is a matter of exploiting their weaknesses and firming up our strengths.Most of the Republican Party remains unwilling to acknowledge that this is a cultural war. And it is. Culture is one of the things that the left is good at. It’s an easy and profitable way for the left to pursue its ends. And it’s fun. But it only works with captive audiences.The left’s cultural infrastructure is wired to feed its programming to an audience that sits there waiting to receive it and is willing to even pay top dollar for the privilege. Like every Iago, it has no idea what to do if Othello not only doesn’t pay for the privilege of going to its schools and movies, but actively tunes it out and forms a community that makes its own entertainment and education.Forget physical secession for the moment and think cultural secession. Physical secession, even if it were achieved, would do little good without putting cultural secession first. And if you cannot manage cultural secession, then how will you ever achieve physical secession?Cultural secession means cutting away the educational and entertainment culture of the left out of your home. It means creating your own alternative education and entertainment and grouping in communities that act as a support structure for traditional values. Is it easy? No. It involves sacrifice. But groups such as the Amish and Orthodox Jews have done it and have thrived doing it.Some wars are settled by guns, but cultural wars are settled by the schoolbook and the movie. They are settled by the family.The progressive agenda is to destroy the family, to undermine it, ridicule it, economically disadvantage it and burden it until it falls apart and is replaced by the Big Brother of the State. The traditional agenda is to maintain the family and pass along traditional values across the generations. That is what this cultural war is really about; whether the family or the state will the defining unit of human experience.The progressives are out to break the family, to slice it up in a thousand ways from the ghetto to the Castro. Everything they do is aimed at eliminating any rival to the state. The traditionalist goal has to be to form communities that are capable of preserving the family despite the power of the state. This is not easy and will become harder as time goes on. But it is what has to be done to reclaim the country.

Raising children within a traditional community is a revolutionary activity. It is an act of cultural and demographic defiance against the progressive state. The traditional community is becoming the new underground of progressive countries. It is the place where parents pass on subversive ideas to their children and teach them to pass on those same subversive ideas to their children.Progressives want every child to grow up to be a slave of the state, thinking the same empty thoughts, laughing at the same things and trotting tamely along to the slaughterhouse. What they fear most is a future where the majority of children do not worship the state, do not accept their premises or parrot their propaganda. What they fear most is a demographic revolution.Can American traditionalists quadruple their numbers in 40 years the way that the Amish will? Doing that will require taking lessons from the Amish, from Orthodox Jews and from other traditionalist groups that have found ways to build tight knit communities that protect their values and preserve their children. Building those structures is the hardest part. But once the structures are there, then the future is yours.

(EYE)(Fox News) When Mitt Romney chose not to directly engage President Obama on Libya in last Monday’s third presidential debate, the mainstream media wrote it off as over-caution on the Republican challenger’s part.That might be true. Certainly a lot of Republicans think so. But what is the mainstream media’s excuse for cautiously engaging the president on Libya? Aren’t we supposed to be watchdogs? The ongoing story is story focused on whether the Obama administration provided, or refused to provide, adequate protection for the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya when it faced the threat of attack on Sept. 11. The attack left the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans dead. Subsequent conflicting accounts coming from the administration on how the White House responded, or didn’t respond, are tailor-made for a full-blown media feeding frenzy.Yet, the so-called media watchdogs so far have been mostly toothless.Case in point: On Friday, FoxNews.com reported that it “learned from sources who were on the ground in Benghazi that an urgent request from the CIA annex for military back-up during the attack on the U.S. consulate and subsequent attack several hours later on the annex itself was denied by the CIA chain of command… — who also told the CIA operators twice to “stand down” rather than help the ambassador’s team when shots were heard at approximately 9:40 p.m. in Benghazi on Sept. 11.”That’s a very chilling story. And if correct, it could be very damaging to the President Obama’s re-election chances. But looking at the websites Friday of other major news outlets, the story is mostly ignored.It was not picked up or reported by The New York Times. The Washington Post didn’t cover it either. Same for USA Today. Neither did NBC, CBS, CNN or ABC.CNN had a link on its Website front page to a story that says “doubts surface” on whether claims of responsibility for the Benghazi attacks was the work of terrorists. The story mostly supports administration accounts and refutes Republican critics such as Sen. John McCain, (R-Ariz.)NBC’s only Friday story on Libya said in its headline. “Libya Disappears from Romney Stump Speeches.” CBS’s latest story on Libya had House Speaker John Boehner asking Obama for “answers” about the attacks.On Thursday, the major media were loaded with stories and videos in which Defense Secretary Leon Panetta defended the administration saying that the US military did not respond to the attack because in did not have adequate “real-time information” to put American forces at risk. Not much follow-up on that.Also on Thursday, NBC’s Brian Williams interviewed Obama on “Rock Center” asking him what can only be described as a “softball” question on Libya: “Have you been happy with the intelligence, especially in our post 9/11 world? The assessment of your intelligence community, as we stand here, is that it still was a spontaneous terrorist attack and were you happy with what you were able to learn as this unfolded?”A tougher question might have been, “Why have the administration’s explanations of what really happened, and how you responded, been all over the map?”So what’s going on here? Are the media just protecting Obama at a critical time in this election campaign, or are they just not following the latest CIA story because they would have to give credit to Fox News? Whatever the reason, it is not good watchdog journalism.

Steve Apfel..Times of Israel..11 June ’12..Consider this lofty statement on media conduct from Jovial Rantao, the editor of The Sunday Independent in Johannesburg:

Credibility is the lifeblood of our profession. Without it we are nothing. Without it, not one person will believe a single word that we write. One of the basic tenets of our profession is to ensure that the credibility of the information we gather…is unquestionable.” (Editor of a newspaper group)

If you follow a clutch of anti-Israel titles, including Guardian, the Times of London, The New York Times, and the BBC, you will know that the statement is wrong. Their Middle East reporters and correspondents care not a jot for credibility of information. Yet they are believed. What accounts for this anomaly?The answer lies in something the statement failed to consider. Journalists not only report news, they also make news, or at the very lease participate in making news. Before illustrating how they do that, we have to understand that a journalist can function in two different ways:

– 1. He can faithfully report what he observed and heard.– 2. Alternatively, he can insert “attitude” in the report, allowing it to color, embellish or even create a story.

The first journalist is the one Rantao’s statement had in mind – the guy without attitude. There are no personal judgements in his report, no inclination to share feelings, and no desire to influence readers to share his feelings. The second journalist would do all of those things.To illustrate both types, here are two reports on war. They are different wars in different periods, one in Afghanistan, the other in Libya. But we are interested in contrasting reporting styles, not their contexts. The first report was filed by Christian Lowe of Reuters.

The pattern of Nato airstrikes on Tripoli indicates that the alliance is trying to reduce Gaddafi’s ability to defend himself at the moment when his opponents, who for the time being are underground, decide to rise up.”

The credibility of the information is unquestionable, and the report meets the lofty statement of conduct.Here’s the second report, again from a war zone, filed by Robert Fisk of Independent.

Sure it was a bad place for a car to break down. But what happened to us was symbolic of the hatred and fury and hypocrisy of this filthy war.

We at once know that we’re reading no observational report. Whatever purpose the writer may have, it’s not to report news. He conveys a personal attitude while not admitting to his attitude. He could equally have written, “I hate this war,” which would be stating a bald fact, not about events, but concerning his attitude toward events. We would know that he personally disapproved of the war, while not finding ourselves drawn into sharing his disapproval.That’s clearly not the case here. The reporter, in the grip of strong emotion, gives us the benefit of his judgment and forces us to share that judgement. He hates war and so must we. The purpose of journalism of this type is quite different from journalism intended to relay a story.The cases to follow might not be so obviously and nakedly emotional, yet all belong to the second type of journalism. They want us to share the writer’s feelings. More than reporting news, they make the news. The case of grammarTwo Reuters reports, on the same day, deal quite differently with an act by Islamic pirates on the one hand and a US military operation on the other. We may call the first the passive case and the other the active case.Under the headline “Achille Lauro mastermind in custody,” we read:

[Abu] Abbas is the leader of the Palestine Liberation Front, which highjacked the Achille Lauro in the Mediterranean, resulting in the death of a disabled elderly American man, Leon Klinghoffer.

Observe the passive case: “resulting in the death” – as if by some regrettable accident. In the film “The Pianist,” there’s a scene where Nazi troops storm into a Jewish apartment and order the family to its feet. The wheelchair-bound grandfather is unable to rise, so the Nazis carry him in the chair out to the balcony and dump both into the street far below. Change the apartment into a ship and the street into the sea and you have what took place on board the Achille Lauro. Abu Abbas (not to be confused with PA President Mahmoud Abbas) and his band carried the elderly man in his wheelchair to the ship’s side and dumped both overboardReuters not only omits these facts but alludes to a regrettable and unintended accident. And there is a further attempt to influence our opinions. The victim was “an elderly American man.” In fact he was an elderly Jew, which the very reason that Abbas and his band selected him to be murdered. They identified him as a Jew. Reuters did not want us to know this.In the same wire service we read:

A senior US military officer said…he would launch an investigation into the killing by US soldiers of an Iraqi boy…

We may observe here the active case, “killing by American soldiers…” While the Islamic act leads (softly) to the death of a man, the act of Americans is a violent one, to kill.The case of cauliflower manWhat would it take for news of someone killed by a bulldozer to make the front page, not of a tabloid, but of a broadsheet for the serious-minded? And what would be the chance of this event making the front page if it happened in a distant country? To lengthen the odds, what if the story had no corpse to show for it? To make the odds even longer, what if the victim was no celebrity or VIP, but an ordinary citizen?Yet it all came together, in Independent. Justin Huggler’s story was about how citizen Salem met his end.Why was Mr. Salem front-page news? For one thing, he was a Palestinian. For another, he was a victim of Israel. Who was it who told Justin Huggler the story? The dead man’s son and daughter.“Old” – that was the first adjective to stir emotions for the dead man. He was old. While on this tack, what more to wring out of the tragedy? What deeper emotion to plumb? On top of being old, the victim was deaf. Who said so? The son, Maher Salem, and the daughter said so.“What more can you tell me about your old and deaf father?” we can almost hear the reporter ask, stirred to the full, and Salem jr., in full stride by now, discloses a poetic turn of mind. He relates how his father’s head had been flattened to the dimensions of a chocolate bar. On this, he was exact. His father’s head was no more than two centimeters thick, after Israeli bulldozers had flattened him in the house.Here’s a story for mass outrage, told by the victim’s children, testified by no mortuary or grave containing the remains of the vegetative father; without so much as a document that there had been a father, in vegetable form or human.The great hoax massacreTo advance from a sham murder to a hoax massacre. The great Jenin hoax is infamous enough to be familiar. It will illustrate the journalist who does not wait for news to happen, but makes it himself. The results were spectacular and went full circle: a scoop story, fame for the reporter, embarrassment, the most indelicate of retractions, and oblivion.On April 16, 2002, Independent covered the front page with a story headlined “Silence of the Dead.” In font size, the headline equalled headlines for 9/11, reserved for news that changes the course of history.“A monstrous war crime that Israel has tried to cover up ..has finally been exposed,” wrote Phil Reeves. He was on the spot, treading the ‘nuclear wasteland’ which had been the Jenin refugee camp, assailed by the ‘sweet and ghastly reek of rotting bodies.’ Killing fields; systematic and deliberate savagery: detestation of Zionists oozed from every word. The harangues of a pogrom-bent street mob set the reporter’s tone. And how Reeves forces us to share his hatred!“It was impossible not to remember the lies and propaganda,” he wrote, ironically anticipating his own exposure as a liar and propagandist. But Hollywood could not have bettered the production, ‘Massacre in Jenin.’ The ghastly reek effects were obtained with animal carcasses, the phantasmal credits shared among complicit UN officials and Palestinian leaders.But the finale was quite unlike Hollywood. It was muted, underplayed, and self-deprecating. The anti-Israel movement, in a hurry to move on to the next Zionist crime, scanned the vague, almost wistful apology tucked away on some inside page. Phil Reeves owned up. His scoop story was ‘highly personalized.’ (‘Personalized’ = driven by my personal feelings towards Israeli Jews.) He went on:“It was clear that the debate over the awful events in Jenin four months ago is still dominated by whether there was a massacre, even though it has long been obvious that one did not occur.” (Meaning, ‘Israelis would not oblige so I produced their crime, which is no more than my job entailed.Strange Murder CasesFabricating Israeli crimes is not the only way journalists can make news. In the first case we look at how Reuters and the BBC made news by inserting their own interpretations in the report.

Murder of a telephone booth

In April 2011, a bomb in a telephone booth went off by Jerusalem’s bus station. Reporting it, Reuters found it necessary to explain terminology. Although Israelis might see it as a ‘Terrorist Attack,’ explained Reuters, others might not see it the same way.“Police described the explosion as a “terrorist attack” — Israel’s term for a Palestinian strike.”A unique and grotesque way, you might think, of reporting a bomb that killed a woman and injured many pedestrians.What exactly did Reuters have in mind? Think if it had reported the London bus bombings with the same formula: ‘Police described the explosions as a ‘terrorist attack’-Britain’s term for an Al Qaeda strike.’What did Reuters hope to gain? First, it’s protecting a patent right. Israelis must on no account usurp the role of victim; the victim patent is held by the Palestinians, a most valuable and jealously-guarded right. A terror attack claims innocent victims, a strike does not. The whole narrative would be turned on its head should Israelis start being the victims of terror attacks. ‘Palestinians are the oppressed people – remember!’Secondly, the euphemism, ‘strike,’ in place of, ‘terror attack,’ is carefully chosen. This too supports the narrative which Reuters wants to instill. ‘Strike’ is softer than ‘attack,’ and infinitely more so than ‘terror attack.’ It is not so hostile or so deadly. Palestinians do not attack –Israel does that. Palestinians, remember, are the oppressed people!Another thing. ‘Strike’ conveys a normal military operation. Just like Israel, as a nation with a right to defend itself, so the Palestinians are a nation with the same right. Reuters conveys that one nation may strike another. A bomb to kill pedestrians at a bus station is one method of striking; hitting Hamas combatants as they fire rockets into Israeli towns is another way to strike. Both methods are part of the conflict – the ‘cycle of violence.’ Reuters, we see, is not merely reporting, it is conditioning news – packaging it in appropriate shape and form to keep the plot tidy.To learn something different from the same case, look to the BBC: ‘Deadly bombing targets Jerusalem bus stop.’This too is a formula, though different from Reuters.’ We are to understand that the bomb was not targeted at people. No – its target was a bus stop, an object fixed on the side of the road. Clearly the BBC has the same object in mind as Reuters: Israelis must on no account usurp the role of victim. Better the victim be a bus stop.

Knife murders family

Another real story now allows one to watch the reporter as he goes through the process of making the news. He starts off blaming a knife for the murder of three siblings and their parents (the Fogel family).The murder of three siblings and their parents is blamed on a knife. Who blamed the knife? Time magazine’s Karl Vick blamed the knife for slitting throats and almost decapitating a toddler. “The murder by knife of three children,” writes Vick. The knife did it. Palestinians don’t kill children in their beds, knives do that. And the Fogels were not a family, they were ‘settlers.’ By using the impersonal and passive voice, Time Magazine takes Palestinians safely away from the horror.“The slaughter did not eradicate the family,” Vick goes on. Now he decides that a knife is too inanimate an object for a credible murderer; he is prepared to own that something, or someone, called ‘The Slaughter’ did the deed. The murderer went by the name of ‘The Slaughter’. But he is still not sure whether The Slaughter is to be given human shape and form. “The means of entry into the settlement,” he writes, reverting to the impersonal voice.We can understand Vick’s problem: ‘The Slaughter’s means of entry’ – not right at all! Only near the end of his report will he concede that humans might have perpetrated the horror. Still, he steadfastly keeps Palestinians away from it. The murders were done by ‘attackers.’ As to that he says, “the identity of the attackers remains unknown.”Like Reuters and the BBC, the agenda of Time Magazine is not to muddy the plot; Palestinians may not be cast as murderers. They are the oppressed people – remember!The melting potA popular and effective media device is to throw Israeli deeds into the pot with Palestinian deeds. What comes out of the pot is a tasty porridge given the name, ‘cycle of violence.’It offers two benefits. One, acts of Palestinian barbarism can be softened or hidden altogether; and two, Israelis can be paired with this barbarism to impart the idea of both sides in the slime pit together.There are many cases to draw on for the melting pot trick. I choose three, for their clarity or horrendous details. The first case deals with the execution of an Israeli child in her bed.We know the reporter, Phil Reeves, producer of the Great Hoax Massacre. The headline Reeves chooses foreshadows what he will do with the story. The headline refers to aggression by Israel. We have to read through four columns on Israeli ‘offensives’ before coming, near the end, to a casual reference to a five year-old shot in front of her mother. “And so,” Reeves concludes, “the cycle of violence goes around.”Into the slime pit he throws both: the Palestinian ‘militants’ who were killed in armed conflict, and a child executed in bed, in front of the mother. I say no more about the porridge Reeves has dished out.Here Associated Press (AP) is caught playing another version of the ‘melting pot trick.’In January 2002 there were two incidents on the same day:

1. A militant sprayed a machine-gun on Jews shopping for the Sabbath in downtown Jerusalem2. The IDF found a bomb factory in the West Bank, and in a shoot-out killed the Hamas bomb-makers operating it.

Throwing the two incidents into one pot AP produces the headline: “Israel kills 4, Palestinian wounds 8.”Observe: Jews are first to be thrown into the common pot, their act being worse – they killed. The Palestinian goes into the pot next – he does no more than wound people. Let us again simulate. If AP reported a WW II story it would headline it: British forces kill 4 SS men, SS men wound 8 camp inmates. Then the British would weigh in heavier than the SS on the scale of evil. Hail AP and its mess of porridge!For a third case take the act of slitting the throats of a three-month old baby, two toddlers and their parents. The LA Times throws the atrocity into the pot and out comes the cycle of violence.

We’re currently witnessing the cycle in real time. On Saturday, five members of an Israeli family living in the West Bank settlement of Itamar were killed, including an 11-year-old boy, a 4-year-old boy and an infant girl, presumably by Palestinian militants. In response to this brutal tragedy, the Israeli government announced that it would build 500 more houses in existing settlements in the West Bank… Which is worse – stabbing children to death or building new houses in West Bank settlements? The answer is obvious. But that’s not the point. The point is that no matter how abhorrent the murders are, it serves no purpose to aggravate the provocation that led to them in the first place.

In other words the murder of a family is a predictable response to the provocation of building houses. Here’s a typical resort to excusing the murder of Israeli Jews. Anti-Zionists brought it into play for 9/11, claiming that it was brought on by America’s provocation in supporting Israel. Provoke Al Qaeda by supporting a country it hates and that’s what you get – 3 000 innocents consigned to a fiery death. America, claimed anti-Zionists, brought 9/11 on itself.So with the LA Times; build houses where Palestinians hate houses to be built and that’s what comes of it – a family slaughtered like sheep. Israel brought this on itself. Observe, into the melting pot go the deeds of both sides: slitting throats and building of houses. They’re ‘tit-for-tat’ action and reaction. In the slime pot where evil cooks there is no difference between the two: houses = slaughter.Karl Vick of ‘Time Magazine’ is another adherent of the formula: houses = slaughter. But he brings more categories into the formula. “Events,” he writes “lurched forward with something very like vengeance.” And he itemises Israel’s acts of vengeance:1) Israel’s condemnation of the murder; 2) Israel’s approval of more home construction; 3) Israel’s complaint to the UN; 4) Israel’s fundraising for the surviving children; 5) Israel’s call on Palestinian leaders to stop promoting violence.Therefore: slaughter of parents + children = fundraising = complaint = house construction = …Media eventsThe media was not happy when Israel considered banning reporters who hitched a ride on the flotilla to Gaza. Journalists took to the high seas with activists and celebrities to ‘break Israel’s blockade’ of Gaza.The Foreign Press Association (FPA) reacted.

This sends a chilling message to the international media and raises serious questions about Israel’s commitment to freedom of the press. Journalists covering a legitimate news event should be allowed to do their jobs without threats and intimidation.

Note, the flotilla was newsworthy only because the media covered it. If the media did not cover it, the flotilla would not have sailed. The media creates the news event through its coverage, and then demands the right to cover the story it created.And that’s how the media, whether they report news or make it, condition us.Link:http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/how-media-condition-people-to-be-anti-israel/

(Media Matters Firsters | Washington Free Beacon)At a book signing event Monday evening in Washington, D.C., Media Matters for America (MMFA) chief David Brock refused to distance himself from the borderline anti-Semitic language used by one of his senior employees.We “don’t feed the trolls,” said Ari Rabin-Havt, MMFA’s executive vice president, when asked if Media Matters condones and stands by the use of the term “Israel firster,” a borderline anti-Sematic slur that is regularly employed by MMFA writer M.J. Rosenberg.“I’m not going to get in a debate about tweets,” Rabin-Havt said, intervening to field a question that was directed at Brock.Rosenberg, however, has not just used the epithet on Twitter. He regularly employs the phrase in articles published by the Huffington Post and other outlets.And now the controversy is spilling into the Jewish nonprofit world.Several of the nation’s most preeminent Jewish charities are facing criticism for donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to MMFA.Five Jewish charities in some of the nation’s largest cities have donated nearly $600,000 to Media Matters since 2006, according to documents obtained by the Daily Caller. The bulk of the donations came between 2008 and 2010.A number of the charities in question are tied to the centrist Jewish Federations of North America, an umbrella organization that includes some of the country’s largest Jewish nonprofits, including those in New York, Boston, and Washington, D.C.News of the donations surprised some Jewish and pro-Israel observers who have condemned Media Matters as a fringe outlier that promotes views contrary to those of the mainstream Jewish community.Jewish donors “have no idea how this organization has turned into a bigoted group,” Alan Dershowitz, a prominent lawyer and Harvard professor who recently launched his own “personal war” against Rosenberg, told the Washington Free Beacon.Since his hire in 2009, Rosenberg’s articles have focused on the power of the so-called “Israel lobby,” which he believes has placed a pro-Israel chokehold on the U.S. foreign policy establishment. Rosenberg has also appropriated the “Israel firster” phrase, a term that has its roots in the white supremacist movement.Many Jews—particularly wealthy philanthropists—are unaware that Media Matters is condoning this type of content, Dershowitz told the Washington Free Beacon.“Many Jews just couldn’t care less—and then there are … the M.J. Rosenbergs who work to destroy Israel,” Dershowitz said. “I would urge donors to reconsider their gifts.”Asked if he was surprised to learn that Jews are fiscally backing Media Matters, Dershowitz responded, “Some Jews supported Mussolini and Stalin, so why should we be surprised?”Of the five Jewish charities that have donated to Media Matters, the most prolific is the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston, which has given the group $362,500 since 2007.CJP president Barry Shrage did not respond to multiple requests seeking comment. However, a statement on the organization’s website states that it is not directly responsible for the donations that were made to Media Matters through its funding arm.“CJP is now—and has always been—one of Israel’s strongest supporters,” the statement said. “The grant in question was from a Donor Advised Fund, and not from CJP’s communal funding allocations.”Donor-advised grants are primarily controlled by the funder.“While owned and ultimately controlled by CJP, [donor advised funds] do not involve communal funds, but rather reflect the interests of those individual donors,” the statement said.The CJP said that it does “reserve the right to reject a grant to organizations whose missions are in conflict with our own and we have done so on several occasions.”Dershowitz, who has ties to the CJP, said that while he disagrees with their decisions to fund Media Matters, Jewish donors should be granted the freedom to give to any organization they choose.Joe Berkofsky, communications director for JFNA, the umbrella group that oversees several of these charities, including the CJP, recommended that the WFB “contact the individual Federations, which in fact are the actual custodians of the funds.”The other charities that have given to MMFA include: The Jewish Community Foundation of San Diego, the Jewish Communal Fund in New York City, the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland, and the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties.Each of these organizations either declined comment or did not return calls for comment.A source close to JFNA described the entire funding controversy as “bullshit.”“People request funds to be allocated from their endowment funds and donor advised funds that are housed at federations,” the source said. “They are not direct allocations by the federations. Federations serve as their philanthropic bank for donations to charities. Unless it’s Jews for Jesus or al-Qaeda, the requests are accepted.”Jewish philanthropists and other experts said that although these charities have been directed by their funders to donate to Media Matters, they have a responsibility to exert oversight and prevent donors from making grants to organizations that subvert Jewish values.“Media Matters is currently in the business of paying for and spreading anti-Israel and anti-Semitic invective, and these donations—which do not comport with Jewish communal values—are funding that organization and its work,” said Josh Block, a Middle East analyst and former top official at a pro-Israel group.Block added that “these Jewish organizations have a special obligation to stand up and declare that funding groups using rhetoric that the ADL, AJC, and Simon Wiesenthal Center have all identified as anti-Semitic and anti-Israel is simply not appropriate—unless of course they agree with Media Matters and neo-Nazis that it is a good idea to call elected officials and other pro-Israel Americans ‘Israel firsters.’”“I’m not surprised that federations are funding these far left liberal agendas,” said Richard Allen, founder of JCC Watch, an organization that tracks New-York based Jewish nonprofits. “I think there’s a group within these federations that is diverting Jewish community money for nefarious political purposes, and it needs to stop.”Jewish philanthropists associated with the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington—which did not donate to Media Matters but has taken heat for its funding of a local theater company that staged a series of plays condemned as anti-Israel—said that the funding dispute reveals a systemic problem.“Sadly, Federations around the country are largely in the hands of secular liberals who have little sense of what’s actually Jewish, much less what’s pro-Israel,” said Michael Steinberg, a Maryland resident who stopped contributing to the Washington Federation for these reasons.Louis Offen, another Washington-based philanthropist, added: “I’ve got liberal tendencies, but they don’t go in the direction of support for [those who use the term] ‘Israel firsters’ and M.J. Rosenberg.”

Why is it that the New York Times still cannot distinguish the moral differences between Palestinian terror and Israeli measures to defend its citizens?Take a look at this headline and accompanying photo from the NY Times’ August 20 story: Why did the NY Times purposely choose an emotive image of a Palestinian child’s funeral? Particularly as Israel was also burying its dead as a result of a terror attack. This sort of misplaced moral equivalence is typical of the NY Times which also states (emphasis added): Israel blamed The Popular Resistance Committees for Thursday’s attack and killed its top commanders in an airstrike later that day, igniting cross-border exchanges after months of relative quiet under an informal cease-fire with Hamas. So who exactly “ignited” the violence? According to the NY Times it wasn’t those who carried out Thursday’s terror attack but Israel for responding. In addition, the term “cross-border exchanges” implies, once again, some sort of moral equivalence between Palestinian rocket attacks on Israeli civilian targets and Israeli responses.

…Also yesterday the BBC failed to mention 80 missiles shot at Israeli civilians. PBS brought out some token Jew from Bloomberg to say that all had been quiet this year. Dutch National TV also did something like this.When they report the effect of any retaliation we don’t have to trust them either. The danger is when we believe them. Not a bad thing when they lie like that. it kills their credibility. The good thing about media when it gets imbalanced is they lose credibility to convince real liberal Jews. Our biggest threat is ourselves. Send your considered comments to the New York Times – letters@nytimes.com – remembering to include your address and phone number if you want it to be published. – Honest Reporting

On YouTube there is a satirical cartoon video representing the leader of the Al Qassam Brigades as a baby, playing with a doll that represents Gilad Shalit and refusing to give him up, even for all the prisoners. While it appears that it was created by a disgruntled Arab, the Arabic media is claiming that this video is part of Israel’s psychological warfare against Hamas. No evidence is given. The YouTube user who uploaded it, “FreedomForPrisoners,” just joined the day he uploaded it. via elderofziyon.blogspot.com